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I recently got a good deal on an Epson C82 and it's great! Since its replacement, the C84 just came out, the C82 should be on continual clearance until the pipeline is empty. I've seen it for $50 or 60. AR every week in the ads.
. For me it's very fast, output quality is excellent (you would have to be very picky to find fault) - I get particularly good everyday picture printing results with the Kodak "Presentation Plus" 28 pound matte ($10. or less for 150 sheets).
. And now that they have the chip resetters, you can refill the ink tanks yourself or get 3rd party for as low as $3.50 each. My first ink is getting low and I have a resetter and ink on order. Hope it comes tomorrow!
. Only drawbacks are if you don't print a lot and noise. The nozzles can clog easily. Just be sure to always turn it off with its own power button when it won't be used for a while (that caps the heads to help prevent drying) and run several prints a week that exercize all the nozzles and you should have little problem.
. When you set the properties to plain paper (default), the feed gets noisy as it jostles the paper stack for each sheet to compensate for the doofs that don't riffle their paper-in stack prior to each run. So if you are a conscientious riffler, just set it to default to a quieter paper - the 'heavy matte' setting works fine with 24 pound plain paper.
A big selling point for the C84 is lower noise... Not much else different. And they are already on sale at $80. AR
. I have no problem with the Canons with separate ink tanks either - I've owned several of them in the distant past.
. Just no Lexmark or Dell (actualy lexmark with modified ink carts that you can only buy from Dell!) - clever, eh? And only the higher end HPs with the separate ink tanks - unless you want to refill yourself. Otherwise too espensive and I don't care for the U shaped paper path.
. Tip! HP often ships printers (esp low end models) with "Starter Ink Carts" . Meaning that they have much less ink in them than the refills will have. Get's the suckers on the milking line that much sooner...
.b.h.

He who dares not offend cannot be honest. -- Thomas Paine.
Simple solution for your voting quandaries: Determine which candidate is supported by the Trial Lawyers, and then vote for one of his/her opponents - 99.99% effective in avoiding total slimeballs.

My info is about 2 years out of date, but back then the Canons clogged if not used very regularly, the Epsons had the best photo print quality and cheapest ink usage. I see 95% Canons at the garage sales I frequent.
More recently a Brirish online "consumer" site chose Canon as the best for ink cost.
I guess I side with zepper. And doesn't Epson have "archival" inks available?

Yeah, the Epson OEM ink is guaranteed archival with the Epson high-end papers. And it is pretty water resistant on plain paper too as I haven't been able to get it to smear.
. But you can get refill ink in kits and bulk from: www.colorfastink.com that claims to be equivalent with their own papers. Most of the other refill ink out there is the old type (dye, not pigment).
. I'll have to print out some color blocks on plain paper before the OEM ink runs out and give it the old fluorescent light, accelerated fade test . Then test again after I've run a tank of refill ink through.
.bh.

He who dares not offend cannot be honest. -- Thomas Paine.
Simple solution for your voting quandaries: Determine which candidate is supported by the Trial Lawyers, and then vote for one of his/her opponents - 99.99% effective in avoiding total slimeballs.

Wetling has the right number- Canon i550/i850 are kick *** printers..... AND the ink packs can be had for $1.90 a color!!!! My dad uses this printer in his dirty autoshop with absolutely no hassels, and he always tells me how fast it is... i ordered 10 of each color from that site and he hasnt had any troubles with them yet- just a sweet sweet deal if you ask me...

Lexmark ink packs for the cheap models (z12, z32,...) cost about 40$, but its normal, that ink packs for cheap printers cost more than for the expansive models. My printer costed less than 10$ more than the ink pack costs alone.

Edit: I have seen that on this page the ink pack only costs $10.95.

But remember, that these ink packs are only for refill and have a bad quality. Also when I tried to refill my inkpack it didnt work, because the ink was tried.

I'm not a big fan of Epson at the moment. The Epson printers I've had in the past weren't that great (though they weren't terrible either). But I understand that there have been some issues with using more than half the ink in a cartirdge.

HP is okay and Lexmark is on my short list of companies I most likely won't ever deal with.

I remember the old BubbleJets weren't great, but the current generation is much better.

Originally posted by wetling I'm not a big fan of Epson at the moment.......... But I understand that there have been some issues with using more than half the ink in a cartirdge.

As zepper noted: "And now that they have the chip resetters,"

wetling is right; the Epsons have a chip that cuts off printing with a varying but too high percentage of ink left, like up to 30% if I'm remembering the test correctly. You can order a chip resetter to tell the machine to print past that limit until you can notice a drop in print quality. I seem to remember that there is another way around the problem. Remove the ink cartridge and replace it. The printer assumes it is full, and resets the meter.

I'm still on the original ink tanks that came with my C82 and the red and yellow are down to under 20% according to the meters. Still printing fine but I hope my resetter and refill ink show up today. I've only had to do one head cleaning on my own and it's been running steadily for nearly two months now.
.bh.

He who dares not offend cannot be honest. -- Thomas Paine.
Simple solution for your voting quandaries: Determine which candidate is supported by the Trial Lawyers, and then vote for one of his/her opponents - 99.99% effective in avoiding total slimeballs.